Chinese EV Startup XPENG To Release Self Driving Capability in 2021

XPENG which is often referred to as the Tesla of China has announced that it will deploy its navigation guided pilot (NGP) in Q1 of 2021. This is basically its take on level 3 autonomous capability. Currently, its ADAS system called XPilot is on a 2.5 level capability. The latest version of XPilot 3.0 will be deployed in the first half of the next year. 

In China, XPENG will join a rather exclusive club with NIO and Tesla who offer autonomous abilities including an advanced ADAS system that can do lane changes, turns, navigation and at times fully drive the car on its own. 

Alibaba-Backed EV Startup XPeng will achieve LEVEL 5 self driving in 2025

XPENG'S P7 is a L3 autonomy ready car and it is powered by Nvidia's self-driving semiconductor technology dubbed Xavier. It has a perception suite that has 14 cameras, 12 ultrasonic sensors and five millimetre-wave radars. 

XPENG also claims that it will achieve level 5 autonomous capability by 2025. This comes at a time when Tesla is also already providing a beta of its full self-driving capability. 

Tesla's autopilot technology has been responsible for many crashes so the onus will be on XPENG to get it right

“The smart EV sector is at a crossroads of a long journey. You need to excel in three areas, including end-to-end R&D capability, data operation, and speed of growth in order to gain long-term competitive advantages. For smart cars, 2020 to 2022 is a period of gathering momentum. The sector will expect an accelerated growth from 2023 to 2025 which will impose significant disruption to the traditional ICE vehicles. I believe that in 2021 the third generation of autonomous driving will become a standard spec for smart cars. Xpeng's Navigation Guided Pilot function will become a benchmark feature,” said He Xiaopeng, XPeng's Chairman & CEO